THE END OF IT.
So Paul Grayson's secret was out at last, and now the boys wished there never had been any secret at all.
"I've had lots of fun trying to puzzle it out," said Ned Johnston to Napoleon Nott on the afternoon of the day of the trial, "but now I wish that I hadn't. Think of poor Paul!"
"I wish he had been a prince in exile," said Napoleon Nott, "for then he wouldn't have had a chance to tell on himself. Princes' sons never have their fathers tried for passing counterfeit money. But I'll tell you what; the way that Paul looked when he said 'Father!' that day was just like a picture in a book I've got, named Doomed to Death; or, the Pirate's Protégé. I'll bring it to school some day and show it to you all."
"I'll break every bone in your body if you do," said Will Palmer.
Notty suddenly remembered that his mother had sent him to the market to order something, so he hurried away from society that he had mistakenly supposed might be congenial, while Ned Johnston made the round of the residences of the various boys who had been at school with Paul. The end of it all was that the entire school met in the school-yard that evening after supper for the purpose of formally drafting resolutions of sympathy. Condolence also was suggested by Sam Wardwell, but Canning Forbes said that the meeting should not make a fool of itself if he could prevent it.
THE MEETING IN THE SCHOOL-YARD.
If the roll of Mr. Morton's school had been called that evening at that meeting, not a single absentee would have been reported. Even Charlie Gunter, who had begun half an hour before to shake with a chill, was present; and although his remarks were somewhat jerky, and his sentences bitten all to pieces by his chattering teeth, he spoke so feelingly that no one manifested the slightest inclination to laugh.
It had been intended that the meeting should be organized in as grand style as any town-meeting to consider the dog-tax question had ever been, but somehow there was a general unloosening of tongues, and no one thought to move that the assemblage should be called to order.